Wagner: Lohengrin
Botha, Isokoski, Bächle, Struckmann, Youn, Eröd
Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Bychkov, Kosky
3 December 2005 - Staatsoper, Vienna
VIENNA, Austria — Barrie Kosky's Wagner is not Wagner's Wagner. The audience at Saturday's new production of Lohengrin thought so too.
At the end of a five-hour performance, there was prolonged applause and "bravas" for the soloists, choir, orchestra and conductor. But Kosky, the director, was roundly booed, along with stage and lighting designer Klaus Grünberg and Alfred Mayerhofer, responsible for costumes.
Most of their work was neither jarring nor controversial. It was worse — irrelevant, leaving the audience little choice but to concentrate on the mastery of the conductor Semyon Bychkov and the soloists Johan Botha, Soile Isokoski, Falk Struckmann, Janina Bächle, Kwangchul Youn and Adrian Eröd. They — and an alternately feisty, majestic or tremulous orchestra — wove a magical musical tapestry.
Wagner was as much an actor and stage director as a composer, and he did not like to have any part of his "Gesamtkunstwerk" — or "total work of art" — messed with. He even defied Bavaria's King Ludwig, cutting out an entire musical sequence from Lohengrin after Ludwig decreed that there would be no horses on the Bavarian stage for that particular June 1867 production.
Of course, a lot of liberties have been taken with Wagner operas since. But those that don't work because they are deemed out of sync with what Wagner might have done today are booed by audiences familiar with the German master, like Saturday's crowd in Vienna.
Worst was the second act, putting the scheming Ortrud and her weak-willed husband Friedrich von Telramund in a child's playground, complete with Day-Glo toy house and plastic animals, including — you guessed it — a swan.
The banality of the setting worked against the sinister bass clarinet passages and strong acting by Bächle and Struckmann. Wagner had it right in his original instruction — they should have been outside Elsa's castle in the dead of night as they plotted to avenge their defeat by the fair maiden and Lohengrin, her knight-savior.
The visuals of the first and third acts were less harmful. Because the opera's counts, nobles and other 10th-century denizens were clad in two-piece suits instead of armor, and the setting was more board room than battlefield, the effect was almost as if the opera was being performed in a concert version.
Which takes us to the music and the soloists.
Wagner actually might have liked Kosky's decision to make Elsa blind. After all, a lot of the heroine's decisions are guided by inner vision — and she was spared the sight of some of the more jarring scenery on stage.
And while many would likely take issue with Kosky's decision to "get away from the German macho brouhaha" of more classical Lohengrin productions, even the most fanatical Wagner fan would probably agree that nowadays Elsa doesn't have to be blonde.
Dark-haired and facially expressive, Isokoski shone in her Vienna debut in the role, with her acting matching a clear voice that was dead-on in pitch and intensity.
Botha was her match as the knight sent from guarding the Holy Grail to rescue her from the evil couple. He is a Wagnerian tenor pure and simple, whose voice seems effortless even at the full volume often called for in this opera.
As Ortrud, Bächle seemed the weakest performer of the evening, occasionally overdoing the evil grimacing and sometimes almost inaudible in the more powerful ensemble pieces. But Struckmann was masterful as Friedrich, putty in the hands of his evil wife.
Eröd was strong vocally as the Herald, as was Youn as King Heinrich — despite lacking the physical presence normally associated with the wise and hoary German ruler.
But then, what can you do when they swap your crown and
armor for a three-piece tan suit?
